Saturday, August 28, 1999

Congress must not
shortchange our oceans

Backed by Inouye, Senate bill
would protect coral reefs, but
House isn't so generous

By Osha Gray Davidson
Special to the Star-Bulletin

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- In 1937, Rachel Carson wrote, "Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I..." More than 60 years later, we have learned a great deal about the marine world. Scientists have discovered deep sea vents where bizarre tube worms thrive on plumes of hot gases. Taxonomists have found and cataloged a host of previously unknown life forms, from glowing microscopic whirl-a-gigs to species of fish that can change their sex several times a night.

It's easy to imagine Carson the marine biologist giddily cheering on these new discoveries. One gets the queasy feeling, however, that that clear-eyed skeptic might also point out that ignorance remains the defining characteristic of our relationship with the ocean. Despite impressive gains, we still know more about outer space than about the waters that make up 99 percent of the planet's biosphere, or living space.

Far worse than our ignorance is our rampant destruction of this environment (a process that Carson, the author of "Silent Spring," knew only too well). A burgeoning human population coupled with technological advances have degraded the oceans, far beyond anything Carson witnessed in her lifetime.

Everywhere you look beneath the waves, you see wounds, tears in the marine biological fabric. Each year trawling nets reduce to rubble an area of seabed twice the size of the continental United States -- the marine equivalent of forestry's clear-cutting.

Nitrogen pours into the ocean from farm fields and from sewage plants and septic tanks on the coast, stimulating huge algae blooms that smother coral reefs and kill fish by the thousands, and creating huge oxygen-depleted "dead-zones."

Over-fishing by the desperate poor, and by the greedy for the affluent, decimate fish stocks around the world. New diseases emerge from our once pristine waters with alarming regularity, threatening to drive some species into the black hole of extinction.

But if threats to the global ocean abound, so do efforts to protect marine habitats.

When we think of organizations working to preserve the oceans, the usual suspects come to mind: the Center For Marine Conservation, Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club. Commendable groups, all. But the primary responsibility for safeguarding the oceans falls -- as it should -- to the alphabet soup of government agencies that most people rarely hear about, organizations such as the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The latter is charged with a unique responsibility in protecting coastal waters including the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems of the marine world: coral reefs, sometimes called "the rain forests of the sea."

The U.S. Senate apparently understands that a fully funded NOAA is one of the best investments in our nation's aquatic future. On July 22, the Senate passed a bill appropriating $2.5 billion for NOAA -- a nearly 15 percent increase over last year's funding.

In a display of bipartisanship that was as pleasing as it was rare, specific coral reef initiatives were advanced by Hawaii's Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

The Senate bill isn't perfect. For example, the Clinton administration had requested $10 million in new funds to be spent annually on reef assessment, monitoring and restoration. The Senate at first axed this important measure, but, at Inouye's urging, finally allocated $6 million for the job. And while NOAA requested $29 million to support and expand its Marine Sanctuaries program, the Senate appropriated just $18 million for this vitally important undertaking.

(To get an idea of just how inadequate current funding is, consider that the New England Aquarium recently spent 50 percent more on an exhibit about the Stellwagen Bank, off the coast of Massachusetts, than NOAA spent last year to manage the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.)

Still, the Senate's action overall is positive, representing a high watermark (forgive the pun) for this session. And it will likely be followed by even more "marine friendly" measures. Snowe has introduced a bill providing community-based coral conservation programs $4 million in annual federal matching funds. She's also backing a separate measure to fund marine sanctuaries at a rate even higher than that requested by NOAA. And Inouye is pressing forward with his own bill, authorizing $20 million a year earmarked for coral reef protection.

But there is a stinging jellyfish in the ointment.

Republicans in the House of Representatives seem inexplicably intent on denying NOAA the funds it needs to do its job. Voting largely along party lines, the House recently passed its own bill, providing a whopping 25 percent less in funds than the bipartisan Senate version.

Differences will soon be hammered out in committee and, if the House Republicans prevail, it will be a case of penny-wise, pound-foolishness at its very worst. The consequences for Hawaii's coral reefs and for many other coastal ecosystems protected by NOAA would be devastating.

Perhaps the House's short-sightedness isn't so baffling. Programs run by "faceless bureaucrats" make tempting targets when budget-cutters unsheathe their knives. But members would do well to remember that not all defenders of the natural world are found in activist groups.

Take, for example, the marine biologist who worked for the FWS for nearly two decades. A faceless bureaucrat she may have been, but the contributions made by Rachel Carson are priceless -- and so is the work of her philosophical descendants of NOAA.

Osha Gray Davidson, an adjunct assistant professor
in international programs at the University of Iowa, spent last summer
diving on Maui doing research for a book on marine diseases. He is
the author of "The Enchanted Braid: Coming to Terms with
Nature on the Coral Reef."